The number of current serving House members who publicly admit they are members of a Communist Party USA scion group, the Democratic Socialists of America is actually about 80. You can Google those members of the last Congress who allowed their names to be released by adding tysknews to the search.

The number of currently serving House members who vote the straight DSA line is said to be 127, a number than may vary by one or two either way. Those House members include Nancy Pelosi, and other "former" DSA members.

So here's the story. Various and sundry have made much hay with a purported newsletter of the Democratic Socialists of America that claims the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus as members. The DSA themselves claim that this document is a fraud, and the congress-members named also rubbish the idea. However, both DSA and explicitly Communist party publications have listed the Congressional Progressive Caucus as their "allies in congress" in relation to various specific issues.Many articles also claim -- without giving a shred of evidence -- that the CPC was founded by the DSA and that the DSA even hosted the CPC website in the early years. If only there was some sort of internet archive we could use to look back at web pages as they were from years ago to see if there is any evidence of this claim....(Oh wait! there is! Uhh, hmm, well, let's count this claim as false.)Both socialist and communist are dirty words in US politics, and even the most progressive politicians hate being called socialist. Alan West did not bring this up out of the blue. He was asked a specific question by some unknown (moby?)in the audience: "what percentage of the American legislature consists of card-carrying Marxists or international socialists"His response mocked the deliberately McCarthian phrasing of the questioner, but he went on to say "It's the Congressional Progressive Caucus"Now, communism and democratic socialism are very different in their goals and the means by which they intend to achieve them. To conflate them is to show that you are politically misinformed.CPC members may not have little wallet cards, but they do tend to trumpet their CPC involvement in their campaign bios. There may not be an explicit relationship between the CPC and the socialist international, but their goals and tactics are the same. So while there is quite a lot of truth behind what West said, there is are also quite a number of ways one can point out that he was factually wrong.

Even if its absolutely true, to phrase his response like that, even mockingly, was dumb. (Public) debate 101, anything that can be misinterpreted to make you look bad -and- evade the actual issue will be.

The only defense is to parse your words carefully and avoid using hot-button phrases. They are going to try to twist what you say, so do your best to make it an obvious stretch in the eyes of the undecided. Don't give them an inch and force them to appear to be the nutjobs they are.

...I'm perfectly okay with commies and socialists running for office and getting elected from places where the voters favor that sort of thing -- I'm not okay with claiming they're really just good Democrats and I am not at all okay with the agenda they and their allies push.

And I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to learn so few will man up and admit what they believe. Cripes, is Bernie Sanders the only one of them with any spine?

LTC West's only "problem" is he won't pretend the Emperor is wearing clothes.